


Back When We Were Beautiful

by helsinkibaby



Category: West Wing
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-11-25
Updated: 2002-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I guess you had to be there, she said, you had to be, She handed me a yellowed photograph, And then said, See…."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back When We Were Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> **Spoilers:** General season one and two.  
>  **Disclaimer:** If it was in the show, it's not mine.  
>  **Author's Note:** My first ever Josh/Donna….and I said I'd never do it! Songfic, based on _Back When We Were Beautiful_ by Matraca Berg - I put the lyrics at the end in case anyone was curious. I'm also putting a tissue warning on this, which is something I don't normally do, but I've been warned that it would be prudent in this case…you be the judge!

****

I gently push open the door, knowing what I'm going to find once I step into the room. Today is a bad day, it always is. It's May 17th, a day when something awful happened, something that changed the lives of those who were there forever. And even though it was over forty years ago when it happened, it's still fresh in the minds of the survivors and their descendants.

She sits on her rocking chair, a heavy photograph album on her lap, photos peeking out from the edges, some slipping out perilously far, ready to fall on the floor. I know that on the table beside her there are more photos, more memories that she'll look at in time. She does this every year, and I've seen some of the pictures that she looks at, in other houses, in other places. But I've never seen them with her. She's never talked to me about them, not once in the fourteen years that I've been alive.

I didn't want to be here today, knowing what her mood was going to be like. But since my parents are away on business for a week, here's where I have to be. So I've been making things easy for her all day, staying out of her way since I came home from school as much as I possibly can. But it's getting later and I'm wondering if I should fix dinner and what she wants, so I've no choice but to interrupt her reverie.

"Grandma?" I ask softly, and she slowly lifts up her head to look at me. I breathe a silent sigh of relief when I see that there are no tears in her blue eyes. In fact, they look remarkably clear, almost serene. "It's almost dinnertime…are you hungry?"

She chuckles softly and shakes her head. "I guess I lost track of time Gemma," she says, looking down at the pages again, and smiling, already back in time forty years and more. "I was just thinking back…"

I nod awkwardly, still standing beside the door. "You want me to start fixing dinner? Because I can…"

She waves her hand in the air dismissively. "I'm not hungry." She lifts her head again then and looks up at me, using that same hand to beckon me over to her side. "Come over here…take a look at these photos with me."

I hide my surprise as best I can, crossing the room in a couple of strides, kneeling down beside her chair, looking up at her the way I used to look at her when I was a small child, listening to her stories.

"Have your parents told you the story of how your grandfather and I met?" she asks me, turning to the front of the album.

"Only that you were both working in the White House."

Grandma's smile grows wider. "Yes…the White House. We actually didn't meet there you know. We met in Manchester, at the headquarters of the Bartlet for America campaign. I'd just driven across the country in a car that was held together by rust and prayers, having dropped out of college to support my bum of an ex-boyfriend-" I must look shocked because she hastily backtracks. "-Not that I recommend that as a career path, I must say. And I walked into the headquarters, picked the messiest desk that I could find and began to answer phones."

"And that was Grandpa's desk?"

"That was your grandpa's desk. And he didn't want to employ me at first, but I talked him around. And I worked with him ever after. We helped to get a good man elected President…Jed Bartlet. This is him here."

I'm about to tell her that I knew what Jed Bartlet looked like, having seen his picture in history books on countless occasions. And I don't know how many times I've been asked about his administration once people find out who my grandparents are. But words fail me when I see this picture. It's a picture of Jed Bartlet that I'd be willing to bet that few people have ever seen; it's not the formal photos that adorn the pages of history textbooks. It's a candid shot of him, whooping in celebration, his wife and daughter Zoey beside him, and an army of cheering supporters around him. From the looks of things, he's about to kiss his wife, and Zoey's about to make some kind of exclamation of disgust. "That was when we won the first election," Grandma tells me. "They said we'd never win the nomination, never mind the election. But we did it. All of us." She lets out a small chuckle, one that's tinged with sadness. "Oh Gemma, what a time that was. Those eight years…the craziest, most horrible, most wonderful years of my life." Her voice fades sadly as she fingers the faces in the pictures. "I guess you had to be there."

There's nothing that I can say to that, so I just wait for her to continue. It seems to take a couple of minutes for her to remember that I'm there, a couple of minutes before she takes up another picture and hands it to me. It's a picture of a man, looking to be in his mid to late thirties. His curly hair is wild, standing up from his head, as if he's spent a lot of time running his hand through it, and he's on the phone, gesturing frantically, probably giving whoever is on the other end a royal telling off. The desk is as messy as messy gets, and I don't wonder that Grandma chose him if this is how he ran his office. Although at least now I can put the state of my bedroom down to genetics. "See," she says to me. "This was my greatest love…my one and only love."

I take the photograph and smile, recognising Grandpa from pictures that I've seen of him, although I've never seen him quite that young before. It's his hair that gives it away, and his eyes. His eyes never changed. Although in the pictures that I've seen of him, he looks less harried, more relaxed. And I can't see his dimples in this picture. I've never seen a picture of my grandpa without dimples before.

While I'm processing this, Grandma hand me another picture, and this time I can't hold back an exclamation of surprise. The woman in the picture is a knockout, dressed in a long red ballgown, her blonde hair knotted up in some elaborate twist. It's obviously taken at a formal gathering of some kind, there are men in tuxedos walking by behind her, but she's looking right at the camera, laughing as if someone is standing behind the person who's taking the photograph, making her laugh. I know who this is even before she speaks. "And this is me. Back when we were beautiful."

I shake my head, wanting to tell her that she's still beautiful, and she is. She still wears the same dress size as the woman in the picture, her eyes are still as lively, still just as bright. Her smile still can make any and all of my problems disappear. Her hair is still long, but it's grey now, and today it's pulled back in a plait. But she's still beautiful.

There's a smile on her face when she looks down at me. "You're going to tell me that I'm still beautiful aren't you?"

"But you are Grandma."

She laughs again. "Everyone tells me that. And I don't like to repeat it…it seems awfully vain, don't you think? But it's only when I look in the mirror that I see myself like you see me now…as old. I don't feel very different…I still feel like the girl in this photo. I remember when it was taken…it was the Inaugural Ball, and your grandpa was making me laugh when Sam took the photo…he could always make me laugh…" She shakes her head, as if pushing the thought away. "It's hard to believe that it was so long ago…I guess I've gotten used to these little aches and pains. But I still love to dance." Another photo is taken out of the album and handed to me. It's of Grandma, in the same dress that she was wearing in the first picture, so I'm guessing that it was taken the same night. She's dancing with the same man that was in the other picture that she showed me, and he's in a tuxedo. "This is us later that same night...didn't your grandpa look handsome in his tux?"

All I can do is nod. "I think I fell in love with him that night. Or before that, but I knew it then. See how we're dancing? Perfect box step, arms straight and a space between us? So formal…God, how they laughed at this photo once we got together…I didn't even know your grandpa had it. Danny, one of the White House reporters gave it to him. Everyone told us that they knew about us before we did."

I look at the photo and I can understand why. Grandma's right, they are dancing in perfect formation. You could look at the picture and only see two co-workers. But if you look at their faces, if you look at their eyes, it's clear that there's something far more at work there. She's looking at him as if he's the greatest thing in the world, and he's looking at her like he can't believe that she's there with him, and I bet that neither of them saw the flash go off, even realised that there were other people in the room. I may be only fourteen, but I know beyond doubt that if any man ever looks at me like that, I'll be incredibly lucky.

"We used to dance the night away. Back before we were together, when we were still in denial, it was an excuse that we could use to get away from our friends, to be alone together. An excuse to hold him to me…he was so strong Gemma. You wouldn't know it to look at him, but when I was in his arms, it was like the rest of the world didn't matter. Like I was safe, protected. I'd never known that before. And he used to smell so good…" She blushes then, probably remembering a few things that I'm too young to know anything about, and don't want to know anything about, because, after all, these are my grandparents we're talking about.

"I hate it when they say that I'm ageing gracefully," she tells me. "I fight it every day. I wish I could go back to the woman in this photo…that I could have all the years ahead of me again, instead of in the past. I wasn't kidding when I told you that those years in the White House were horrible at times…there were bad times Gemma. Times that I wish no-one had to go through."

"Like Rosslyn?" I feel guilty for mentioning the word on today of all days, and her face goes pale and her lips press into a hard line as she nods.

"I didn't even look at the speech on television that night. My roommate and I were looking at a movie on another channel when they broke in with a special report. I was so scared that I was shaking, and I just knew that I had to get to the hospital. I was lucky that every cop in the city was otherwise engaged, because I ran I don't know how many red lights. And when I got there, all I wanted to do was see him, hold him, know that he was all right. When Toby told me…I just couldn't understand. Couldn't understand why people would want to hurt him. Hurt any of us. I still can't understand it." Tears brim in her eyes and I can tell the effort it's costing her to keep them back. "Those were the longest fourteen hours of my life. And even after that, we wasted so much time in denial when we could have been together. But still…I don't really regret it. Because the waiting meant that when we did get together, we treasured what we had. We never took a single moment for granted." She sighs. "I just wish we could have had more moments."

I lay the photo of the two of them back on the album, letting my hand rest over hers, lending her what comfort I can. I never knew Grandpa Josh. He died long before I was born, back when my mom, the oldest of their three children had just graduated high school. Uncle Noah was sixteen and Uncle Jed was the same age that I am now. I've heard stories from all of them about the kind of man their father was; about the stories he'd tell, about the things that he'd done with them. Mom is especially vocal about how he used to tell her that she couldn't date until she turned fifty, and Dad, for some reason, thinks that that's a great idea for me. I object, and when I do that in Grandma's hearing, she tells me it's like going back in time to when my Mom was my age. Grandma Donna was still pretty young when Grandpa Josh died, and people used to tell her that she'd find someone else, that she'd fall in love again, but she never did. I remember overhearing my mom once asking her why she'd never married again, why she had hardly dated afterwards, even though men continued to ask her out. And Grandma had told her that she just wasn't interested, that Grandpa had been the love of her life, and that she was perfectly content to raise their children and make a new life for herself on her own.

"Don't get me wrong," Grandma continues now. "I love my life, and my kids. And I love my grandkids…. they're sweet to hold." I'm the oldest of us, and the only child of my parents. But Uncle Noah and Uncle Jed have a flock of kids between them, ranging from ten to six months in age. And all of us have grown up with Grandma in our lives, holding us, feeding us, listening to us, telling us stories and spoiling us rotten. "I just wish that he could have seen you all. You think I spoil you? Oh, he'd be a thousand times worse. And you would have loved your grandpa so much…all those awful jokes he told…" She sighs again. "Sometimes for a laugh, we'd act like we were old. All the things that we'd probably say and do. We used to talk about sitting in our rocking chairs, hand in hand, looking at our grandchildren as they played around us…and sometimes, when I'm sitting in this chair, I look across at where I think he should be, or I stretch out my hand, and I can't believe that he's not there to hold it. To see what I'm seeing. He would have been so proud…"

Her voice trails off and I have to duck my head to hide the tears that are streaming down my face now. I feel her hand on my hair, smoothing it down, running through the curls, and I close my eyes and just let the tears fall. When I hear her speak again, I'm not sure if I'm just imaging it. "Those curls…so like his…."

When I pull myself together I look up at her, managing a smile. "Show me some more photos?" I ask.

She smiles too, looking flattered momentarily, before she shakes her head sadly. "Oh, you don't want to look through an old woman's memories…"

I know she really means it, but she's wrong. "I do. Please? If you don't mind?"

Her smile is the only answer she gives as she opens the album to another page, of a photo still taken on the same night, with a larger group of people, people I vaguely recognise as younger versions of my grandma's friends. And she points them out one by one and tells me stories about them all, about falling off boats, about falling into pools, about emergency root canal and secret plans to fight inflation. About anniversaries and flowers and all the other things that happened to her and my grandpa, back when they were beautiful.


End file.
